"...we should pass over all biographies of 'the good and the great,' while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows."~Edgar Allan Poe

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

The death of twenty-two year old Vaden Boge is oddly reminiscent of the case of Jessie Culbertson. Boge, a native of Oregon, traveled to Los Angeles and checked into the Alexandria Hotel on November 27, 1922, as "V. E. Boge and wife." He ordered dinner for two, and soon afterwards staggered out into the hallway exclaiming that he had been poisoned. He died a few minutes later. Cyanide was found in the dregs of one of the two cups of coffee in his room. Friends and family had no warning he might kill himself, and he left no suicide note, so the initial thought was that his "wife" had poisoned him.

This theory soon fell to pieces when it was discovered that Boge himself bought the poison that killed him. As far as anyone could tell, "Mrs. Boge"--whom no one at the hotel had ever seen--did not exist. Authorities decided that Boge, not wishing his loved ones to know he had committed suicide, carefully arranged for it to look as if he had been murdered...murdered by someone who could not be charged with the crime, as she was a phantom.

No one ever knew for sure why Boge would want to end his life, but relatives speculated that it was due to despondency over a recent bout of ill-health.

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